RUTHFULLY YOURS

https://www.city-journal.org/article/harvards-double-standard-on-free-speech

After Harvard student groups blamed Israel for Hamas’s atrocities, the global backlash was so fierce that the university’s president, Claudine Gay, released a video statement that in some ways proved even more puzzling. “Our university rejects the harassment or intimidation of individuals based on their beliefs,” she said. “And our university embraces a commitment to free expression. That commitment extends even to views that many of us find objectionable, even outrageous.”

Really?

This was news to the scholars with unpopular views at Harvard who have been sanctioned by administrators, boycotted by students, and slandered by the Crimson student newspaper. And it was certainly news to anyone who follows the Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression’s annual analyses of threats to free speech on campus.

In this year’s FIRE report, Harvard’s speech climate didn’t merely rank dead last among those of the 248 participating colleges. It was also the first school that FIRE has given an “Abysmal” rating for its speech climate, scoring it zero on the 100-point scale (even that was a generous upgrade, as its actual composite score was -10). That dismal distinction made headlines last month across the United States, Europe, the Middle East, and Asia—but not on the Harvard campus. The Crimson didn’t even publish an article in its news section, much less an editorial; Gay didn’t make a statement, either.

Once upon a time, journalists and scholars on both the left and right were staunchly devoted to free speech and academic freedom, if only out of self-interest. Liberals like Nat Hentoff of the Village Voice defended the rights of Klansmen and Nazis because they knew the First Amendment was their profession’s paramount principle. But in the past decade, that bipartisan devotion has been disappearing, particularly at elite colleges. Harvard’s journalists and scholars adopted the principles that Hentoff criticized in the title of one of his books: free speech for me, but not for thee.

Leftists are free to stir controversy without fear of punishment from Gay and other administrators, and they can count on the Crimson to defend them. Jewish groups on campus were outraged last year when the Palestine Solidarity Committee’s annual spring event, Israeli Apartheid Week, featured lurid murals accusing “Zionists” of being “racists” and “white supremacists.” The Crimson’s editorial board promptly declared itself “proudly supportive” of the murals and the international BDS (Boycott, Disinvestment and Sanctions) campaign to make Israel a pariah state. When that editorial stirred further outrage and accusations of anti-Semitism, the Crimson’s president issued a statement proclaiming the newspaper’s commitment to “freedom of expression.”

But that commitment vanishes when the campus’s leftist majority gets angry. The targets of their anger have received, at best, no support from the Harvard administration or the Crimson. At worst, those voices find themselves denounced, investigated, disinvited, or punished by administrators, and they have endured the Crimson’s outrageous campaigns to silence, sanction, and banish them.

https://www.newsmax.com/newsmax-tv/ron-desantis-israel-college/2023/10/28/id/1140065/

Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis blasted woke antisemites and anti-Zionists in American colleges, the media, and the “worthless” United Nations on Saturday on Newsmax.

“I don’t care what some imbecile on a college campus says; I don’t care what liars in the media say; and I certainly don’t care what worthless institutions like the United Nations say: We are going to stand with Israel in this dark hour for them,” DeSantis told “Saturday Report.”

DeSantis, who is campaigning for president and speaking Saturday in the Las Vegas gathering of the Republican Jewish Coalition Conference, hailed his state for having revoked Florida college students’ “privilege” to support Hamas in the war against Israel over “material support to terrorism.”

“You may have a right to say certain things, but that’s material support to terrorism if you’re saying you’re part of what they’re doing, so we deactivated the Students for Justice in Palestine and were the first state to step up to the plate and do that,” DeSantis told host Rita Cosby before his RJC address.

“I was the first candidate to say that if you have foreign visa holders out there making common cause with Hamas, I’m canceling their visa and I’m sending them back,” DeSantis added. “That’s a bare minimum.

“They don’t have a right to be here on a student visa. It’s a privilege to be here on a student visa. There’s a lot of Americans that would probably want those slots. There’s other foreign nationals who actually like the United States who would probably want [one].

“They have no right to have those visas, and if they’re going to make common cause with terrorism, we are going to eject.”

The problem on college campuses in sharing anti-Israel progressive narratives has been building for a long time, according to DeSantis.

https://www.nationalreview.com/2023/10/make-pro-hamas-countries-that-fund-american-universities-fess-up/

We need to know more about the support that nations such as Qatar, which offers material and financial aid to Hamas, are sending to U.S. colleges

After the mass terrorist atrocity along the Israel/Gaza border on October 7, we had the horrific sight of radicals on American campuses siding with Hamas. For example, some student organizations have overtly engaged in clear victim-blaming. One Cornell professor even overtly celebrated Hamas murders. This kind of extremism has caused some businesses to run for the hills; they’ve withdrawn job offers and  threatened to never hire the students involved. Some prominent foundations and wealthy, influential individuals, including former Utah governor and ambassador Jon Huntsman, have canceled their donations to colleges and universities. Former Harvard president and Clinton- and Obama-administration veteran Larry Summers declared himself “sickened” as well as “disillusioned and alienated” by how his former university handled this issue.

It is nearly impossible to know all the factors that play a role in this sort of radicalization and pro-terrorist sentiment on campus, alongside the administrators’ sympathy and acquiescence. But one thing is a simple fact: American universities receive massive sums of money from countries that openly support Hamas and terrorism more broadly, and we know very little about what these countries are getting for their money. We need transparency about these transactions. Fortunately, just days after the attack, the House Education and Workforce Committee rolled out legislation, months in formation, to help address this problem.

Make no mistake, this is a big issue. The tiny, oil- and natural-gas-rich country of Qatar is one of the most profligate Hamas-supporting nations in the world.